


Someday

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Series: Dog Days of Summer [33]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: dogdaysofsummer, Lie Low At Lupin's, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-02
Updated: 2006-07-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 06:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3640878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someday, when the war is done...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someday

The grass smells sweet, newly cut and brilliant green in the sunlight. It tickles the bare skin of his forearms, his ankles, the most skin he's exposed in ages. There are white puffy clouds hanging in the sky and he can see an erumpet, a minotaur, a rabbit, if he tilts his head and squints.

"And you say I'm obsessed with chasing rabbits," Sirius says, laughing, when he points this out. It's good to hear Sirius laugh, though his laugh is rusty, like a gate hinge that's been too long unoiled, the laugh of a man who's forgotten how, and it's all the more joyous for remembering.

"We could stay here, you know," he says, and he can feel Sirius go still beside him. "The house isn't much, but it's mine." He hesitates, then, "It needs more work than one man can reasonably do, but I think the two of us...." He trails off into silence and closes his eyes, imagining Sirius up on a ladder, reshingling the roof the Muggle way, shirt off, no longer too-thin body gleaming gold with sweat and health and sunlight.

"And Buckbeak," Sirius says.

Remus laughs. "But of course. And Buckbeak. We can build a second shed. He can have his own room. Have lady hippogriffs over to tea, or whatever it is hippogriffs do for fun."

He turns to look, finally, at Sirius, memorizing the slope of his forehead, the angle of his nose, the curve of his jaw, the same but different after so many years of deprivation, refined in the crucible of Azkaban and all the more beautiful for it.

Sirius continues to stare up at the blue sky, clouds mirrored in his rain-colored eyes. "It sounds brilliant," he says. "We could make it Unplottable, hide in plain sight." He smiles. "Scandalize the neighbors with behavior inappropriate for two bachelor gentlemen such as ourselves." He closes his eyes, and Remus can count the long dark lashes fluttering like fans against his cheeks. He turns his head towards Remus, and when he opens his eyes, Remus can see his answer already, carved like the cold grey stone of Azkaban itself. "I can't," he says softly. "Harry needs me. And the Order--"

Remus nods and sighs, hope leaching out of him. "I know."

"Someday," Sirius assures him, "after the war is done." He reaches out, takes Remus's hand, his skin warm and rough and slightly damp.

A cloud passes over the sun, and Remus shivers, tightening his grip on Sirius's hand. He wishes he could believe that someday would ever come.

*


End file.
